Tax Time and Drivers' Licenses

Extremely long time readers will remember that about ten years ago, the State of Alabama sued me and I won, all by my lil ole lonesome, going against several attorneys' advice.  I actually was able to prove that the State of Alabama owed me, but that I was willing to waive that, if they would drop the ridiculous case they thought they had.  Should they want to move forward with it, then they would not only fail to prove that I owe them, but they would actually end up paying me.  The case was dropped, ohpsie; and I received a very nice apology, which is filed in the appropriate place, under T for taxes.

Since I have been married, we've been having a tax service prepare and file our income tax forms and returns.  I didn't want to mess with taxes preparations and also knew that I was not up to deal with the headaches and hassles of this exemption, that retirement, the other thing, and so forth.  Usually, I have some sort of idea how all of it will play out and then feel the satisfaction of confirmation.

However, yesterday, I realized while we were sitting at the office that I'd not done my usual preparations; so quickly pulled out an envelop and flexed my memory a fair bit, pulling together figures that we'd gotten together last summer for this agency and that one over there, regarding my mother~in~law's health expenses, for the first half of the year.  Also, my husband retired from his second career last spring, and started another part time  job last fall, and there were some additional medical expenses for me that weren't usual, and so forth.  I was also tired, a bit frazzled, and the baby was tired, so my husband and I were taking turns walking her to help her relax and go to sleep.

The first thing that went wrong was that my driver's license was expired, since last November.  Ohps, but luckily I had another valid picture form of ID, my military card.  Then a whole slew of things happened, some of them twice, that shouldn't have happened and some things that should have happened didn't.  And our tax person said, "gosh, I'm glad you're sitting down cuz you owe a bit under ten thousand dollars."  My breath stopped for a few moments until I remembered that inhaling is NOT always frowned upon.

Then it sounded sort of like this, "aheeeeeckah."

It woke the baby who began to cry along with me.

But we then discovered where some of the multiple mistakes were and within 45 minutes, the forms were corrected and looked to be very similar in overall appearance to our past years' tax returns.  WHEW!!  Glad, oh so glad, that we caught those before the final version was accepted.

However, I had a HUGE headache when I got home, and felt dizzy and stressed thru the rest of the evening; my confidence was a bit shaken and taxes are not something to be taken lightly.  Last night, I experienced several sleep paralysis episodes and scared my husband horribly with tea~kettle screams that start quietly hissing and gradually build into shrieks.  Oh so much fun, yeah?

Early this afternoon, I was standing in the overcrowded DMV waiting for their software to go back online.  I'd already paid, the receipt was already in hand, however, they were not able to take my picture because that's when everything crashed.  For the entire state of Mississippi, in all the DMV offices, for about half an hour.  Half an hour doesn't seem like a long time, until you're not feeling so great and the office is full of not so happy campers who are seemingly staring at you because YOU somehow gummed up the works.  What?  Do the cameras break when they take your picture too?

Rationally, I knew it didn't have a damn thing to do with me; but irrationally, I thought about every time that I have ever been to the DMV's here in Mississippi for myself and how something major goes wrong every time...like the time they changed the format of the drivers' licenses and somehow they couldn't get the printer to line up the card with the info and printed me six licenses before one came out sorta lined up right.  It looked so fake but they were tired of fooling with it, so just gave it to me and said that if I had any problems, just have the officer call them.  However, two days later, I removed my license from my wallet and the lamination peeled off and so I had to go get another anyway.

Eventually, we were moving along again and I double checked my license to be sure that all was well {one time, they didn't type in my entire address and it just read "Highway 12 West" with no house number}.  The weight was off, but I didn't care that it read one hundred pounds less than I weigh.  Considering that this license is good for eight years, there is a chance that the weight noted will be correct at some point.  Or not.  I don't think that matters as much as getting my address right and having a picture on there.